Plenty Valley Community Health (PVCH) is the lead agency for a Department of Health and Human Services funded trial that will improve referral processes between health services and General Practitioners (GPs) in the North. E-Referral is recognized as the foundation to improving care across healthcare settings by providing a mechanism for efficient transmission of referral information. GPs from Hume and selected GP’s from Whittlesea who agree to participate in the trial will be able to send secure electronic referrals (e-Referrals) to Plenty Valley Community Health (PVCH) and Northern Health (NH).

Where is the project up to?

-91 GP’s have been contact so far about registering their interest in participating in the trial

-16 GP’s have already registered their interest to participate in the trial

-Project members are following-up with the remaining GP’s in the catchment

-Testing of the e-Referral solution with Best Practice and Medical Director has been completed and successfully passed, testing of Zed Med has commenced and due for completion end of February 2017

-The Project Manager has met with Managers, Coordinators and Team Leaders to discuss the changes that will occur

-Information Session has been scheduled for February 2017, open to all staff to attend

-Training for both Northern Hospital an Plenty Valley Community Health staff members who manage the referrals is now complete

-An addition six GP Practices’ will go Live in the coming weeks, increasing the number of electronic referrals received by both facilities

-Precedence Health Care will continue to contact the Practices who have registered their interest to participate to schedule the training of sessions and Go live dates for each individual clinic.

-Onsite support will be provided to all Practices during Go live by the Project Manager, PHN representative and Precedence Healthcare

-The PHN’s will be collecting baseline data during the training session to enable a post implementation review of the electronic referral process to measure benefits and efficiencies of the electronic referrals.